What's Not Meant To Be
by Invariant
Summary: A strong,little heart-rendering moment between Olivia and Peter in the present timeline. T for Language.


**Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or the characters. I just like to use and abuse them. **

**This is a quick little ditty I wrote up after 'And Those We've Left Behind'. Why? Cause I miss our P and O SO MUCH! Takes place at the end of the winter, months after the episode. **

**Reviews are like candy!**

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><p><strong>What's Not Meant To Be<strong>

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><p>There are few things he hates worse then the cold.<p>

Anchovies and techno music are secondary on the list of things he despises, but nothing seems to top the icy chill of winter.

She's realized this, in the short time she's known him, because he never indulges in Lincoln's pizza preference and turns the station, with a sour face, whenever Far East Movement plays on the radio.

But it's the way he stiffens his body in the field, bounces from his right foot to left in a freezing, negative windchill that makes her realize he can't stand arctic temps.

His hands are constantly shoved in black wool pockets, on cases when they've walked, runned, questioned in the cold outside of winter months, he hides any flesh he can behind the confines of his peacoat's warm fabric.

Funny how something he despises so much, so generously suits him.

His cheeks and nose were red, when she answered her door, a winter roseca that's deepend the blue of his eyes, enhanced thier twinkle, colored him completely in the type of wonder invested in things like sparkling snow and Holidays.

As she expects by now, he's hugging his coat tight, shifting his weight, creating an indothermic friction to warm the chill that's crept down his scarf.

"Is it wrong that I wish this timeline offered exponential Global Warming?"

No hello, no hey, just a simple smile under a frustrated brow; just the scruffy, boyishly handsome face of a man who once haunted her dreams to appear, five months ago, in a hospital room reciting her name. He's made an indelible impression, since then, turning her distrust to it's oppisite with his undeniable intellect and impressive comfortability in the para-fantastical world she thrives in.

He fits in so effortlessly here, with her, and her team, knee deep in the Fringe of extrodinairy things.

But it's the way that he always looks at her, with somekind of hidden knowledge dancing in azure flecks of grey-blue retina, that makes her wonder now, constantly, if this once stranger knows somehow what questions she's whispered in the loneliness of darknights.

The way he's so ruthlessly attacked her independent impediment, quietly uprooted her self-assurance and snuck, uninvited into the back of her mind, has planted new,unhinged chills at the base of her spine.

Not the apprehensive kind, or the terrifying, but the kind that tingles her fingertips with phantom pricks of a quiet attraction.

Somehow, he tip-toes under her skin and electricutes her blood.

No matter how open-minded she is, Peter Bishop sabotages everything she knows of real.

The man, standing before her, with snow-flakes thawing on lashes of eyes that study her always, too hard for too long, has hit her, head on, with a Mac truck of personal frustrations.

He scares her shitless while exciting her mindless.

And she hates that somehow, he could know that he does this.

"Hey."

Is all the reply she can muster with too big a smile to his impromtu, unplanned visit.

The curve of his mouth stretches wide in response and he quits moving to grab the manilla files tucked under his arm.

"These are for you." He says, and hands her the reports. "Lincoln left them at the lab. I told him I'd drop them by on my way home."

They've become quite close, her partner and this man, and she doesn't like how often she wonders, when they're together at a bar or theorizing over take-out, if they talk much about her.

She doesn't like that she cares, maybe too much, what this man thinks of her; how he compares her to the her of a timeline she's never been.

That her could be better, wiser, more emtionally solid and on the squeaky rubber-ducky side of normal.

Without question, to this stunningly, beautiful man, she could be a second-rate version of herself.

And it makes her feel too damn self-concious.

"Case reports." she states, grabbing the thin pile, "Just what I always wanted."

"I thought you'd like it"

His hands find his pockets again as he rolls on the balls of his toes, rubs his neck under the tall collar that shields him from his enemy.

This is what she's use to from him, an almost nervous reaction everytime he's across from her threshold. It wasn't often he found his way here, to her apartment, he wasn't prone to accepting her invitations on the nights she's impulsively drawn to his company.

So she doesn't ask him anymore, not since a month ago when out to dinner on a case, without hesitation, he wiped ketchup from the side of her mouth. He'd forgotten for a moment, who she was, where they are and what they were, and from the way his eyes had grown dark in a quiet apology, she'd felt a dull ache reach her chest, hollow it out.

She can feel the way he misses who she is to him, in a world different from this one, being here, at her apartment, meant a night spent in her bed, in her arms, in the kind of love that leaves a raw, painful mark when the universe tears it away.

This isn't his timeline, or his home, or his world. And every day he plans how to get back there, to where he's from and Lincoln and Broyles emerse themselves in his agenda, but she can't find the power to be any more useful then the broken light on her desk top.

Not when she knows, selfishly, that if he goes back, the emptiness inside her will consume her once more.

She can feel the breath in his body, the heat that bounces off his skin, and maybe there's some kind of truth to quantum entanglement because she's considered, endlessly, if she's taken somehow what belongs to a different one of her.

These feelings, she has, this racing of her pulse when he's near, this silent, exciting of her cells that plays under her flesh with the strongest desire she's ever known, she's stolen from the her of his world.

Or maybe, like all gulls seek the sea, and rain, a surface, every version of her is helplessly drawn to him.

Maybe he's the once-in-a-lifetime indelible mark that's branded on her every, many soul.

She catches herself thinking, and she finds the present again when she turns her eyes from the files back to him.

"Do you, um, do you want to come in?" She knows he'll decline, say no in the way he always does because spending time with her meant remembering, but she can't help herself.

Not when those needled chills are turning to heat in her blood, searing up her vertebre to burn under her sternum; a wildfire igniting a ventricle-swell.

He shakes his head, bites his bottom lip, and looks down in a mixture of hesitation and pain, an internal conflict she attributes to the silent frustration of a dis-lodged fate.

He'll refuse because he doesn't want to forget again, in the too many moments, she's not the woman he loves.

And it's not right to the balance of worlds, and nature and time, that she's crushed by the ways he can't see her, pained by the way she imagines he'd love her.

What belongs to someone else, she aches for, and in the way he's careful, always careful to catch himself when he almost reaches out to touch her, constantly reminds her that she's not supposed to want what she wants.

So the universe can fuck itself.

Because to either of them, none of this is fair.

"Actually, I have to get back." He says to the floor, then looks to her "Early morning tomorrow. I promised Walter I'd be at the lab by seven."

Even the man who refused, at first, to have anything to do with him has warmed to the thought of who Peter Bishop could be. She's watched, over the past few weeks, as Walter finally let himself believe in something like miracles and second chances.

What kicks at her resolve the most, is the way this once-stranger is too patient, too kind towards a man the world's to eager to discount as crazy, derilect, insane.

In any world, this Bishop can't help the love felt of a son toward his father.

It's this unyeilding compassion, that makes him beat even hotter, under her flesh.

And it's now, she's growing to anxious by his presence, too impatient to know, just who, in a different world, she is to him ; just what perfection of herself she has to live up to.

"Peter, who was I to you, really?" she asks, digging the corner of a file into the palm of her hand, as if the pain of it would somehow lesson the conontations of his answer.

The beautiful line between his brow, deepens, brings to the surface an internal ache he never speaks of. Too many times she seen it, in the moments they're alone and his eyes are obisdion in a slip-up of desire, she's watched his attraction turn from a half-lidded gaze to a pain shadowing the planes of his face.

It hurts him to be with her.

And it hurts her to wish, in the silence of these moments, that she were someone else.

He's wearing the all-too familair frown now, above soft eyes that beg her not to be curious, that latch onto and scream at her soul to be left alone in thier personal anguish.

And at any other time she prides herself on presistence, but she knows she'll feel guility later, when she'll think this over, of her own eagerness right now.

"I-I know it's hard for you, to talk about. But I know I was more then just important to you," she says, digging the files in so hard, she can feel a cut forming, and when she continues, her voice is a tad louder then a whipser. "I can feel it somehow, when you forget that I'm not her. It's written all over your face."

In the way it's written now, as she watches his eyes turn both aquine and navy, in sad reminiscence, and he sucks in air to steady a breath that would have trembled his voice.

Regret is already appearing; a result of her catalogue of said things.

"You're right." he says simply, his voice a hoarse whisper. "She was-is, everything to me."

A weighting of despair, sadness, drops Oliva's lungs to her feet, a swift puch of heavy realization of all the ways he's unable to feel for her.

Maybe she really is a poor man's Olivia Dunham.

"She was my purpose, my rock." He says. "And when I made the choice to save her, I ended up here. Because I was unable to let you-her, go. And now I have to live everyday knowing there's a chance, that I may not-"

He can't finish his words, he's too choked up by the thought of not getting home, of never having again the precious thing that he tries so hard to get back to, and she wants so badly too pull him into her, fulfill the selfish need of her mind, her body to make him realize she too, can love him all the ways he'd known before.

But he's paralyzed her in the way his eyes have glossed over. He's lost in an invisble thought and when he trails it to the end, he looks at her with wet eyes.

"I never meant for how I feel to effect you. It isn't fair. I'm sorry Olivia."

There's a tennis ball in her throat and she swallows it, feeling the burn of bile and empathy that acidates in her chest.

"I'm not."

She says, and taken off guard he frowns.

"I know, none of it is meant for me, that-that you love a different version of who I am, but you have to know that in the months since you showed up..."

She can't look at him, as she searches for words to finish, but the lead in her rib-cage is stopping solid thought from reaching her left brain.

So she starts over.

"For as long as I can remember, I felt this...emptiness." now she looks at him, and he's more confused then before. "And when you're here, near me, I don't feel so alone. And maybe, I like how that feels a little too much."

She shrugs her shoulders, defensless and he drops his.

Then she's betrayed by wet heat, when it pools at the corner of her eye, and she swears, under her breath, because she's stronger then this, not as weak, and helpless as this.

Damn him for sabotaging everything she is, too.

"Olivia-." she holds up her hands, stopping him from rejecting her outright, because she wasn't who he really wanted.

"It's okay, Peter. I- don't, I don't need you to apologize anymore for-for any of this. I just, I just wanted you to know, that I know how easy it would be for her to love you, too."

Her words hang in the air between them as he's eerily still, motionless, then something she doesn't recognize plays across his face, colors his eyes in the same mysterious dark blue as twilight.

The way they're burrowing into her, suffocating her alive where she stands is too dangerous, too excitingly terrifying, that even her soul has lost its footing.

"Peter..." she manages to hash out, trying to release herself of the hold he's he's put her in. "I know I'm not her. But there are moments when I wish I was. Just so I could deserve the way you look at me. Like the way you're looking at me now. And I guess I just, I just wanted you to know that."

She hasn't breath left, when she finishes, or unshed tears because one has fallen now, she feels the damp on the arch of her cheek, and gravity pulls it down, in the same direction it's pulling her heart.

And in somekind of irritated frustration, she bats at it, wipes it away with the back of her hand because she hates being so emotionally unstable, and so deeply enamored with a man who will never cross her doorway in the way he's crossed into her soul.

Goddamn the fucking, undeniable way he affects her.

She covers her eyes with her hand, in a futile attempt to shield herself from more embarassment, and as she tries to calm her nerves, take in air, she can only breath in his heat, his breath and his shallow pulse.

Even blind somehow, she knows only him.

And she fucking hates the hoplessness of it now.

She didn't have the right to wish he stay here with her, shouldn't be so selfish as hope he never finds a way back to the place he grieves for.

He'll never stop searching for somewhere else.

There were nights though, after exhaustive postulation, he's questioned to her, if this truly is the world hes from, if there's simply a measure of something lost that could connect all the forgotten pieces of everyone around him.

Such an idea is too complicated though, too painful, so he tosses it aside and favors quantaum leaping.

But the fiber of his being tugs, incessively on her heart's strings; a pulling of who and how he is that whispers in hints of need and comfort.

Everything she's made of points to his recycled theory.

He belongs here, with her.

But to him, this isn't and may never be, his real home.

Reality's defeated her. Again.

"You know what, ugh-." Olivia pinches the bridge of her nose in her fingers, a de-pressurising of tension ache. Then she drops her hand and slaps the thick folder against her other palm in self reprimand.

Think first. Then speak. Even that simple formula, he's jumbled to mush.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry you had to hear that, because none of this matters." she, says, unable to look at him, so she raises her eyes to the ceiling. "What I feel, what I want, it's completely, pointless because you don't belong here. This isn't your real home."

She feels ten sizes too small, as she mentally chides herself, dwarfed by her raw sentiments and now the awkwardness that follows such boldness.

She should have said, confessed to, nothing at all.

Then maybe she'd be safe and alone behind her door and not burning, from the subdermis out, by the dark saphhire swimming in his too-heavy half stare.

"I shouldn't have-" she's interrupted by the way he's reached out, pressed his hand to her face, is stroking her cheekbone with his thumbpad, flushing her skin to a darker blush.

It's never been so strong as now, his control of her, she's never been so lost for self-measure as she's beginning to be, and when he finally does it, steps over her threshold, it's more then just a shock to her concious; it's an all-over body numbing blindside-edness.

She can do nothing, but attempt to stand here on weakening legs.

In a swift dip of his head, he presses his lips to hers, capturing her trempling mouth in the softest of kisses. It's not intense, or hard, or passionate, but it leaves her boneless, with the tiniest taste of sweet nector and manna; a spiritual nourishment she'd called out for unawares.

This is her promised land, pink flesh that harbors a heaven that surges through her core context.

She can't deepen the kiss, can't yank him into her like she wants to because he pulls back, leaving her lips hungry, so damn hungry and aching for more of him.

The same way the rest of her aches for more.

His forehead is against hers, as his breath falls on her face, heavy inhalations of tearse air, and through the blaze he's lit in her body, she somehow feels tense, subdued, painfullly resisting impulse and urge.

And when his fingers grip tighter the sides of her shoulders, she realizes it's his struggle that's seeped into her. It's supposed to be contained, what he feels, held-back and private to him and he alone. It's more than an echo, more then her deduction.

Somehow his matter is vibrating in her, a synchronal pulsating of his tender composition.

This is hurting him, too extrodinarily much.

The reality of this world fights his desire, and he's clenched his jaw, squeezed his eyes tight, intent to win a battle that's crawled below her external tissue.

And it's cracking her heart into eighteen million tiny pieces.

He forces himself erect then, and she feels indurate, so small against his height or maybe it's his yearning, his silent craving for another's skin that's trapped her in sorrow.

_This, him_ and what they could have is merely a dream, her dream, a whisper of what could be in a world where he's convinced he belongs here.

But it never will be, and her grief is inconsolable now.

His resistance still hard, his pain still etched in lines above dewy grey eyes, he runs his thumb, one last time, along the edge of lips he'd heated with his flavor.

"I wish you were her, too."

Whatever spoils he'd taken in his two second victory, he loses because he has to tear his fingers away, bite down tensely on his desperation, and when grey-blue shines behind salt and water, his whole body is rigid in the tumolt of his misery.

He's completely and utterly broken.

As if this was the most physical pain he's ever known.

Without a doubt, it's hers.

He steps back then, out and away from her and because this is too severe a moment, he can no longer survive in the atmosphere of her air.

So without another word, and before he can fall apart, completely, he leaves her doorway and hallway and vision. And she's never felt so gelid, chilled to the bone by his torn-away-heat.

She too, hates the cold.

And she falls to the floor, with her self-control a pastime, and she cries, quiet tears screaming for a love that's not hers.

He doesn't belong here.

And she doesn't want to now either.


End file.
